Professional Documents
Culture Documents
v.
OPINION
CITY OF BOISE,
Defendant-Appellee.
SUMMARY*
Civil Rights
*
This summary constitutes no part of the opinion of the court. It has
been prepared by court staff for the convenience of the reader.
MARTIN V. CITY OF BOISE 3
The panel held that although the doctrine set forth in Heck
v. Humphrey, 512 U.S. 477 (1994) and its progeny precluded
most — but not all — of the plaintiffs’ requests for
retrospective relief, the doctrine had no application to
plaintiffs’ request for an injunction enjoining prospective
enforcement of the ordinances.
Turning to the merits, the panel held that the Cruel and
Unusual Punishments Clause of the Eighth Amendment
precluded the enforcement of a statute prohibiting sleeping
outside against homeless individuals with no access to
alternative shelter. The panel held that, as long as there is no
option of sleeping indoors, the government cannot criminalize
indigent, homeless people for sleeping outdoors, on public
property, on the false premise they had a choice in the matter.
COUNSEL
OPINION
I. Background
1
The United States Department of Housing and Urban Development
(“HUD”) requires local homeless assistance and prevention networks to
conduct an annual count of homeless individuals on one night each
January, known as the PIT Count, as a condition of receiving federal
funds. State, local, and federal governmental entities, as well as private
service providers, rely on the PIT Count as a “critical source of data” on
homelessness in the United States. The parties acknowledge that the PIT
Count is not always precise. The City’s Director of Community
Partnerships, Diana Lachiondo, testified that the PIT Count is “not always
the . . . best resource for numbers,” but also stated that “the point-in-time
count is our best snapshot” for counting the number of homeless
individuals in a particular region, and that she “cannot give . . . any other
number with any kind of confidence.”
MARTIN V. CITY OF BOISE 7
2
The record suggests that BRM provides some limited additional
non-emergency shelter programming which, like the Discipleship
Program, has overtly religious components.
3
The intake form states in relevant part that “We are a Gospel Rescue
Mission. Gospel means ‘Good News,’ and the Good News is that Jesus
saves us from sin past, present, and future. We would like to share the
Good News with you. Have you heard of Jesus? . . . Would you like to
know more about him?”
MARTIN V. CITY OF BOISE 9
A. The Plaintiffs
4
The parties dispute the extent to which BRM actually enforces the
17- and 30-day limits.
10 MARTIN V. CITY OF BOISE
B. Procedural History
II. Discussion
A. Standing
5
Standing to pursue retrospective relief is not in doubt. The only
threshold question affecting the availability of a claim for retrospective
relief — a question we address in the next section — is whether such
relief is barred by the doctrine established in Heck.
6
Although the SAC is somewhat ambiguous regarding which of the
plaintiffs seeks prospective relief, counsel for the plaintiffs made clear at
oral argument that only two of the plaintiffs, Martin and Anderson, seek
such relief, and the district court considered the standing question with
respect to Martin and Anderson only.
16 MARTIN V. CITY OF BOISE
Kemna, 504 F.3d 705, 712–13 (9th Cir. 2007). Yet at the
conclusion of a 17-day stay at River of Life, or a 30-day stay
at City Light, an individual may be forced to choose between
sleeping outside on nights when Sanctuary is full (and risking
arrest under the ordinances), or enrolling in BRM
programming that is antithetical to his or her religious beliefs.
The 17-day and 30-day limits are not the only BRM
policies which functionally limit access to BRM facilities
even when space is nominally available. River of Life also
turns individuals away if they voluntarily leave the shelter
before the 17-day limit and then attempt to return within
30 days. An individual who voluntarily leaves a BRM
facility for any reason — perhaps because temporary shelter
is available at Sanctuary, or with friends or family, or in a
hotel — cannot immediately return to the shelter if
circumstances change. Moreover, BRM’s facilities may deny
shelter to any individual who arrives after 5:30 pm, and
generally will deny shelter to anyone arriving after 8:00 pm.
Sanctuary, however, does not assign beds to persons on its
waiting list until 9:00 pm. Thus, by the time a homeless
individual on the Sanctuary waiting list discovers that the
shelter has no room available, it may be too late to seek
shelter at either BRM facility.
B. Heck v. Humphrey
7
Plaintiff Pamela Hawkes was convicted of violating the Camping
Ordinance or Disorderly Conduct Ordinance on twelve occasions;
although she was usually sentenced to time served, she was twice
sentenced to one additional day in jail.
MARTIN V. CITY OF BOISE 21
2. Retrospective Relief
3. Prospective Relief
a single act for which they may not be convicted under the
Eighth Amendment — the act of getting drunk.” Id. at 551
(White, J., concurring in the judgment).
8
Naturally, our holding does not cover individuals who do have
access to adequate temporary shelter, whether because they have the
means to pay for it or because it is realistically available to them for free,
but who choose not to use it. Nor do we suggest that a jurisdiction with
insufficient shelter can never criminalize the act of sleeping outside. Even
where shelter is unavailable, an ordinance prohibiting sitting, lying, or
sleeping outside at particular times or in particular locations might well be
constitutionally permissible. See Jones, 444 F.3d at 1123. So, too, might
an ordinance barring the obstruction of public rights of way or the erection
of certain structures. Whether some other ordinance is consistent with the
Eighth Amendment will depend, as here, on whether it punishes a person
for lacking the means to live out the “universal and unavoidable
consequences of being human” in the way the ordinance prescribes. Id.
at 1136.
MARTIN V. CITY OF BOISE 33
9
In Joel v. City of Orlando, 232 F.3d 1353, 1362 (11th Cir. 2000),
the Eleventh Circuit upheld an anti-camping ordinance similar to Boise’s
against an Eighth Amendment challenge. In Joel, however, the defendants
presented unrefuted evidence that the homeless shelters in the City of
Orlando had never reached capacity and that the plaintiffs had always
enjoyed access to shelter space. Id. Those unrefuted facts were critical
to the court’s holding. Id. As discussed below, the plaintiffs here have
demonstrated a genuine issue of material fact concerning whether they
have been denied access to shelter in the past or expect to be so denied in
the future. Joel therefore does not provide persuasive guidance for this
case.
34 MARTIN V. CITY OF BOISE
III. Conclusion
10
Costs shall be awarded to the plaintiffs.
36 MARTIN V. CITY OF BOISE